The identification of several growth factor receptors and retroviral oncogenes as tyrosine-specific protein kinases indicated that protein phosphorylation on tyrosine residues plays a key role in cellular growth control. This notion has recently received support by the observation that the level of tyrosine phosphorylation of enzymes thought to play an important role in signal transduction (such as phospholipase C) correlates with their increased activity upon growth factor stimulation, thus establishing a functional role for tyrosine phosphorylation (Ullrich, A., et al., Cell 61:203-212 (1990)).
The degree and pattern of phosphorylation of tyrosine residues on cellular proteins are regulated by the opposing activities of protein-tyrosine kinases (PTKases; ATP:protein-tyrosine O-phosphotransferase, EC 2.7.1.112) and protein-tyrosine-phosphatases (PTPases; protein-tyrosine-phosphate phosphohydrolase, EC 3.1.3.48). The structural characteristics and evolution of PTKases as well as their role in the regulation of cell growth have been reviewed (Hunter, T., et al., Annu. Rev. Biochem. 54:897-930 (1985); Ullrich, A., et al., supra).
2.1. PTKases
Tyrosine kinases comprise a discrete family of enzymes having common ancestry with, but major differences from, serine/threonine-specific protein kinases (Hanks, S. K. et al., (1988) Science 241, 42-52). The mechanisms leading to changes in activity of tyrosine kinases are best understood for receptor-type tyrosine kinases which have a transmembrane topology (Ullrich, A. et al., supra). With such kinases, the binding of specific ligands to the extracellular domain of these enzymes is thought to induce their oligomerization leading to an increase in tyrosine kinase activity and activation of the signal transduction pathways (Ullrich, A. et al., supra). The importance of this activity is supported by the knowledge that dysregulation of kinase activity through mutation or over-expression is a mechanism for oncogenic transformation (Hunter, T. et al., supra; Ullrich, A. et al., 1990, supra).
2.2. PTPases
The protein phosphatases are composed of at least two separate and distinct families (Hunter, T. Cell, 58:1013-1016 (1989)), the protein serine/threonine phosphatases and the protein tyrosine phosphatases. This is in contrast to protein kinases, which show clear sequence similarity between serine/threonine-specific and tyrosine-specific enzymes.
There appear to be two varieties of PTPase molecules. The first group is comprised of small, soluble enzymes that contain a single conserved phosphatase catalytic domain, and include (1) placental PTPase 1B (Charbonneau, H. et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 86:5252-5256 (1989); Chernoff, J. et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 87:2735-2789 (1990)), (2) T-cell PTPase (Cool, D. E. et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 86:5257-5261 (1989)), and (3) rat brain PTPase (Guan, K., et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 87:1501-1505 (1990).
The second group is made up of the more complex, receptor-linked PTPases, termed R-PTPases or RPTPs, which are of high molecular weight and contain two tandemly repeated conserved domains separated by 56-57 amino acids. One example of RPTPs are the leukocyte common antigens (LCA) (Ralph, S. J., EMBO J., 6:1251-1257 (1987); Charbonneau, H., et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 85:7182-7186 (1988)). LCA, also known as CD45, T200 and Ly-5 (reviewed in Thomas, M. L., Ann. Rev. Immunol. 7:339-369 (1989)) comprises a group of membrane glycoproteins expressed exclusively in hemopoietic (except late erythroid) cells, derived from a common gene by alternative splicing events involving the amino terminus of the proteins. Whereas the precise function of CD45 is unknown, many studies have implicated these antigens in a number of processes, including the activity of cytotoxic T lymphocytes and natural killer cells, IL-2 receptor expression, B-cell differentiation, and T lymphocyte proliferation (Pingel, J. T. et al., Cell 58:1055-1065 (1989)).
Other examples of RPTPs are the LCA-related protein, LAR (Streuli, M. et al., J. Exp. Med., 168:1523-1530 (1988)), and the LAR-related Drosophila proteins DLAR and DPTP (Streuli, M., et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 86:8698-8702 (1989)). Jirik et al. screened a cDNA library derived from the human hepatoblastoma cell line, HepG2, with a probe encoding the two PTPase domains of LCA (FASEB J. 4:A2082 (1990), abstr. 2253) and discovered a cDNA clone encoding a new RPTP, named He-PTP. The HePTP gene appeared to be expressed in a variety of human and murine cell lines and tissues.
While we are beginning to understand more about the structure and diversity of the PTPases, much remains to be learned about their cellular functions. It has been suggested (Tonks, N. K., et al., Biochemistry, 27:8695-8701 (1988)) that the small, soluble PTPase enzymes may have a "housekeeping" function. On the other hand, the RPTPs would be expected to be more restricted in their activities because of their location in the cell membrane and their potential regulation by extracellular ligands. Regarding the role of LCA (CD45) in T cells, it was found that T cell clones deficient in the expression of LCA failed to proliferate when stimulated by a specific antigen or by cross-linking of CD3 (Pingel, J. T., et al., supra). PTPase cross-linking inhibits T cell receptor CD3-mediated activation in human T cells (Kiener, P. A. et al., J. Immunol. 143:23-28 (1989)). The PTPase activity of LCA plays a role in the activation of pp.sub.56.sup.lck, a lymphocyte-specific PTKase (Mustelin, T., et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 86:6302-6306 (1989); Ostergaard, H. L., et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 86:8959-8963 (1989)). These authors hypothesized that the phosphatase activity of LCA activates pp.sub.56.sup.lck by dephosphorylation of a C-terminal tyrosine residue, which may, in turn, be related to T-cell activation.
Using site-directed mutagenesis to determine which of four conserved cysteines in LCA (two per phosphatase domain) was required for enzyme activity toward artificial substrates, Streuli et al. (1989, supra) found that only one cysteine residue (residue 177 of LCA phosphatase domain-1) of LCA was essential for activity, indicating that, most likely, only the first phosphatase domain has enzymatic activity. However, the possibility that the second domain can dephosphorylate a different substrate was not excluded. More recently, Streuli et. al. (EMBO J., 9:2399-2407 (1990)) determined that the second conserved domain of LCA (and of LAR) lacked detectable phosphatase activity but sequences within the domain could influence substrate specificity.
Thus, a better understanding of, and an ability to control, phosphotyrosine metabolism, requires knowledge not only the role of PTKase activity, but the action of PTPase enzymes as well. Elevation of cellular phosphotyrosine may occur through mechanisms other than the activation of a tyrosine kinase itself. For instance, expression of the v-crk oncogene, though not a tyrosine kinase, induces the phosphorylation of tyrosine residues through a poorly understood mechanism (Mayer, B. J. et al. (1988) Nature 332, 272-275). Potentially, such an outcome could result from either mutation of the substrate or through a general decrease in cellular phosphatase activity, especially in view of the normally high turnover rate of cellular tyrosine-phosphate (Sefton, B. M. et al. (1980) Cell 20, 807-816). The latter possibility is suggested by the demonstration that tyrosine phosphatase inhibitors can "reversibly transform" cells (Klarlund, J. K. Cell 41: 707-717 (1985)). PTPases could therefor act as recessive oncogenes.
It is becoming clear that dephosphorylation of tyrosine can by itself function as an important regulatory mechanism. Dephosphorylation of a C-terminal tyrosine residue stimulates tyrosine kinase activity in the src-family of tyrosine kinases (Hunter, T. (1987) Cell 49, 1-4). Tyrosine dephosphorylation has been suggested to be an obligatory step in the mitotic activation of the MPF (maturation promoting factor) kinase (Morla, A. O. et al. (1989) Cell 58, 193-203). Lastly, genetic analysis of primitive eukaryotes has established crucial roles for serine phosphatase in cellular physiology (Cyert, M. S. et al. (1989) Cell 57, 891-893). These observations point out the need in the art for increasing our understanding of the mechanisms that regulate PTPase activity.
It is clear in the art that further delineation of structure-function relationships among these PTPases and RPTP membrane receptors are needed to gain important understanding of the mechanisms of cell growth, differentiation, and oncogenesis.